(My) personal lore-wise Paradis – pt 1/?
Small list of my Attack on Titan headcanons but make it about Paradis and more lore building. Totally random and made up but tried to adapt it to the canon times and if you want, you can use them for your fanfictions if you feel like you like some of these 🤎
- Outdoor activities are very popular. Fishing (there's canonically a river so why not?), hiking, picnics, aside from hunting.
- They don't celebrate Christmas, as they don't have a Christian/Catholic type of faith. But they surely celebrate the anniversary of the building of the walls. But I definitely see them celebrating the New Year: in the main squares, especially those with clock towers as they wait for midnight to come.
- As in the previous point, soldiers but also civilians celebrate the foundation of the military forces.
- Sunday would be dedicated to the market: it would be in strategic districts, one for each wall: Shiganshina, Trost, and Stohess. There, imported products from nearby villages would be sold; depending on where the market is and which district, you would get different products.
- The village festivals would also be famous, especially in the small ones. Dedicated for local traditions, with stalls and typical food and street music.
- National holidays would be the birth of the walls, the founding of the military forces, the birth of Ymir Fritz and the King (later Queen Historia). All with a public speech that attracted many people from different parts of Paradis.
- The soldiers would have the weekend off to go home to their families and hang out with their friends. I feel like in the main story, it seems like they're always on duty at one point.
- Only high ranking officers would get their room, but not only Commanders and their second in commands—like in Erwin and Levi's case. Even Squad Leaders would have their own quarters, depending on availability of rooms and the size of the headquarters. The others would sleep in dormitories, and since there are multiple branches scattered around the nation, the overcrowding of a certain branch would lead to sending the soldiers to another headquarters.
- Accounting would definitely be a job. Especially within the military. Recording income and expenditure is crucial, especially after 845, when rations and money are running low.
- The government would allocate a percentage for each regiment. However, the Scouts would get a bit more funding, at least until the big numbers of casualties that led the King to take a step back (privilege regained, in part, with Erwin as a Commander, at least before he would get on the government's bad side).
- We know that makeup is a thing. Carla wore lipstick, Traute (yes, TRAUTE. Her. She.), and that one girl Annie spoke to in the Lost Girl ep. Makeup would be done with pigments taken from berries, madder root (like in actual medieval times) + beeswax, that could be a component of some sort of lip balm. Pigments that could be used for blush, for example.
- Tree resin could be used, for those who wanted, as a substitute for wax. Even though razors were a thing. Also for clear polish.
- Unfortunately, after Shiganshina was attacked, I feel like that some returned there to plunder it. Even at the cost of meeting a titan, they knew many people left their stuff there as they evacuated. It wouldn't be that unrealistic to imagine soldiers doing that.
- Which traditions might the people of Paradis have, you wonder? We know that in present times, tons of them are connected to old stories and urban legends that were the basis for the birth of particular dishes or folklore in general. It's not difficult to picture Paradis, especially older people, who share old stories with the new generations. Here's one that I imagined, always with dishes and foods that could easily be found there, with the food that was available:
• The pankitty! In which a boy was sick, so sick he would only eat bland food like steamed bread. Who visited him, perched on the windowsill of his bedroom window while he was recovering, was a stray cat that always roamed around his house. The child, only having that bread left, always fed the cat a few pieces of it, hiding them in a corner of his room. Eventually, the kid died and his mother found the chunks of steamed bread. From that moment on, the pankitty was born—steamed bread in the shape of a cat's head, given to sick children or the sick in general as a sign of good luck. To wish them a good recovery and that the cat watches over the sick, you can add dried fruit, seasonal fruit or chocolate to give it more flavor, but also olives or rosemary if someone likes bread that isn't sweet.
- People like fortune tellers would be controversial, but popular. Especially after the fall of Wall Maria, as it had increased fears for the future.
- Do you remember Dr. Scholl's wooden slippers? An ancestor of them would be very common in Paradis. Nothing more than wood and a piece of fabric and leather on top.
- Even though Paradis doesn't have our traditions, I feel like a day Valentine's Day, or some variation of it, would be a thing.
- And since there is the Cult of the Walls, there would be masses on Sundays, adapted to that "religion". They would have their own sacred scriptures, prayers, etc.
- Since working out is definitely a thing, why not sports? Horseback riding, target shooting, shot put... whatever seems to please and entertain people. Also shooting darts.
- In Paradis, there were different social classes. This could be seen from the teeth. The richest had gold or silver teeth or fillings. The less wealthy had them made of hardened resin, shaped as a tooth or directly put in the rotten tooth to fill it if there was a cavity.
- Since the military is a large part of the nation, there would be a cemetery dedicated solely to fallen soldiers. Despite the cult of the walls' faith, funerals would be just like the ones we know, and the pastors would ask Ymir for clemency for the souls of those who passed.
- In the times before the Titans' reappearance, the government encouraged women to have children. After the fall of Wall Maria, the government totally regretted that.
- Plumbing system wasn't a thing. If you were lucky, you had a bathroom. If not... the streets were a pigsty. Medieval times weren't exactly clean, but there were certainly public toilets of questionable hygiene that everyone could use.
- Regarding hygiene, it is true that it varied from person to person (Isayama said that the cleanest were Levi and Eren, so it truly was up to people's approach to it). However, bath oils would be very common—rose, cinnamon, lemon and various citrus fruits, lavender—and soaps with similar scents, used for the body and hair.
- Tea time was definitely a thing.
- Many physical ills would have been a divine consequence, just like mental issues. Just like in ancient times, they had their own explanations for how the weather and the human body worked.
- There are accents and dialects, as we know that Sasha has a southern accent, living in Dauper. The North, richer, would be posher, the South would have a more difficult dialect to understand. Bonus points for the Underground, which has its own dialect, slang, and accent.
- Regarding the previous point, Levi certainly had trouble making himself understood when he first became a soldier, because of the way he spoke. Over the years, he learned to speak like "those of the Surface," as he would surely call them, but still kept certain slang words and toned his accent down a bit in certain contexts. Except when he was mad.
- Erwin had a slightly posh accent, while Nile Dok definitely tried to be posher after he became a Commander of the MP, due to his higher status.
- In summer, people would make granita with shaved ice and fruit juice. Sold at stalls in every district. Easy and cool.
- We don't need to specify that smoking was a thing... plants weren't safe. None of them.
- Some areas would be more affected by the heavy rains, especially the areas between Wall Rose and Wall Maria. Erwin would surely tell about a tragic mission, when Shadis decided that rain was just water pouring down from the sky: a pouring that became a thunderstorm, and the gusts of wind and rain swept away several soldiers and their horses.
- Reading, drawing and writing were forms of entertainm, but I think model making was very popular—making dollhouses and dolls—as well as the tailoring, making jewelry, and other similar crafts like swords and gears for soldiers.
I guess this is all that my brain could come up with for this topic. Let me know if you want more of this stuff, and I'll try to think about more headcanons. Also, let me know what you think about it! Xoxo